Don Orsino | Page 9

wonderful tints, famous in the history of Eastern
collections, and upon it is set at a slanting angle a single priceless
Damascus blade--a sword to possess which an Arab or a Circassian
would commit countless crimes. Anastase Gouache is magnificent in
all his tastes and in all his ways. His studio and his dwelling are his
only estate, his only capital, his only wealth, and he does not take the
trouble to conceal the fact. The very idea of a fixed income is as
distasteful to him as the possibility of possessing it is distant and
visionary. There is always money in abundance, money for Faustina's
horses and carriages, money for Gouache's select dinners, money for

the expensive fancies of both. The paint pot is the mine, the brush is the
miner's pick, and the vein has never failed, nor the hand trembled in
working it. A golden youth, a golden river flowing softly to the red
gold sunset of the end--that is life as it seems to Anastase and Faustina.
On the morning which opens this chronicle, Anastase was standing
before his canvas, palette and brushes in hand, considering the nature of
the human face in general and of young Orsino's face in particular.
"I have known your father and mother for centuries," observed the
painter with a fine disregard of human limitations. "Your father is the
brown type of a dark man, and your mother is the olive type of a dark
woman. They are no more alike than a Red Indian and an Arab, but you
are like both. Are you brown or are you olive, my friend? That is the
question. I would like to see you angry, or in love, or losing at play.
Those things bring out the real complexion."
Orsino laughed and showed a remarkably solid set of teeth. But he did
not find anything to say.
"I would like to know the truth about your complexion," said Anastase,
meditatively.
"I have no particular reason for being angry," answered Orsino, "and I
am not in love--"
"At your age! Is it possible!"
"Quite. But I will play cards with you if you like," concluded the young
man.
"No," returned the other. "It would be of no use. You would win, and if
you happened to win much, I should be in a diabolical scrape. But I
wish you would fall in love. You should see how I would handle the
green shadows under your eyes."
"It is rather short notice."

"The shorter the better. I used to think that the only real happiness in
life lay in getting into trouble, and the only real interest in getting out."
"And have you changed your mind?"
"I? No. My mind has changed me. It is astonishing how a man may
love his wife under favourable circumstances."
Anastase laid down his brushes and lit a cigarette. Reubens would have
sipped a few drops of Rhenish from a Venetian glass. Teniers would
have lit a clay pipe. Dürer would perhaps have swallowed a pint of
Nüremberg beer, and Greuse or Mignard would have resorted to their
snuff-boxes. We do not know what Michelangelo or Perugino did
under the circumstances, but it is tolerably evident that the man of the
nineteenth century cannot think without talking and cannot talk without
cigarettes. Therefore Anastase began to smoke and Orsino, being young
and imitative, followed his example.
"You have been an exceptionally fortunate man," remarked the latter,
who was not old enough to be anything but cynical in his views of life.
"Do you think so? Yes--I have been fortunate. But I do not like to think
that my happiness has been so very exceptional. The world is a good
place, full of happy people. It must be--otherwise purgatory and hell
would be useless institutions."
"You do not suppose all people to be good as well as happy then," said
Orsino with a laugh.
"Good? What is goodness, my friend? One half of the theologians tell
us that we shall be happy if we are good and the other half assure us
that the only way to be good is to abjure earthly happiness. If you will
believe me, you will never commit the supreme error of choosing
between the two methods. Take the world as it is, and do not ask too
many questions of the fates. If you are willing to be happy, happiness
will come in its own shape."
Orsino's young face expressed rather contemptuous amusement. At

twenty, happiness is a dull word, and satisfaction spells excitement.
"That is the way people talk," he said. "You have got everything by
fighting for it, and you advise me to sit still till the fruit drops into my
mouth."
"I was obliged to fight. Everything comes to you naturally--fortune,
rank--everything, including marriage.